


Nature of Self

by VariableMammal



Category: Metroid Series
Genre: Gen, One Shot, Post-Canon, Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-07
Updated: 2017-03-07
Packaged: 2018-09-30 04:56:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10154144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VariableMammal/pseuds/VariableMammal
Summary: Samus Aran is the galaxy's most feared bounty hunter, and she's grown even stronger in power in recent times. With that power comes the possibility of giving into it, and the threat of former allies.





	

    Samus Aran felt light, as if she was floating. She couldn't even hear her steps as she progressed. She made her way through the familiar, labyrinthine tunnels and caves of Zebes, the planet where she had spent most of her youth. It was dark and yet she had little trouble seeing everything with exceptional clarity.  
  
    Making her way around a corner, she saw a figure carefully searching. A cold realization swept through her as she took in the colors and angles of the figure. The red helmet and green visor. The huge orange shoulder pads. The Varia Suit! It was an impostor, an enemy! Samus lunged forward without another thought and slammed straight into the figure, and the armor staggered and reeled. It spun around and leveled its green arm cannon at Samus, but she swerved to the left and again tackled the figure, enveloping it.  
  
     _Destroy it! Destroy her!_  
  
    Samus clutched tightly onto the Varia Suit, furiously draining it of energy. She'd drain every last point of energy out of the vile enemy. The figure of the Varia Suit struggled in vain to activate its Morph Ball function, but Samus was too fast, too powerful. The suit crumpled under its own weight, turning to nothing but a gray sculpture. Samus lurched off of the defeated, drained form and it crumpled into dust. Samus felt satisfied, and full of energy, and-  
  
    Abruptly, she woke with a start and a gasp. She quickly brought her hands in front of her. They were pink, fleshy things with five fingers, as she'd always known them to be. She rubbed them on her face, slapping herself a couple of times with each, then ran them through her hair. Long, blonde hair. Just like it was supposed to be. Samus' breathing slowly came under control and she grimaced, rising out of bed.  
  
    She'd never dreamed she was a  _Metroid_ before, Samus thought to herself with an audible grunt. Passing from her cramped sleeping quarters to the slightly bigger bridge of her purple gunship, she looked with some disdain at her Fusion Suit, as she'd come to call it, sitting in the energy-refilling bay. She'd begun to feel a level of caution towards it, and didn't like keeping it stored in the material matrix surrounding her, as she had with her Varia Suit. There was something unsettling about it. Not that it wasn't comfortable. It was a bit  _too_ comfortable; an extension of her body that was even more in sync with her thoughts than her other suit had been.  
  
    That's what worried Samus. She still knew next to nothing about the Fusion Suit. Where had it even come from? Had the Chozo really prepared for the possibility that Samus' Varia Suit may have become corrupted by an outside source? Or had the inclusion of Metroid genetic material into her system spontaneously reacted with the under layer of her suit, feeding off her energy not unlike a Metroid to weave a twisted suit from the bio-technologies that the Chozo had developed?  
  
    Samus ran her hand along the left arm of the suit. The material of it was almost yielding, yet when she gripped harder it toughened. It felt reactive and strong, reminiscent of Metroid flesh. Samus felt unnerved. Several times she had fought both for and against the Metroids' extinction but now she felt like  _she_ was, perhaps, the last Metroid.  
  
    Samus' hand gripped hard on one of the spiky fins on the forearm of her suit and she willed her strength to bend and snap off the spike. She grit her teeth as she swore she could feel a small dip in energy from the suit that she wasn't even wearing. The fin she had removed quickly grew back. Samus' upper lip curled at the reaction, and she shook her head and sighed. She next pulled out a strand of her hair, then walked closer to the cockpit.   
  
    A vaguely familiar group of scents greeted her nose, and she looked off to her right to see the Etecoons and Dachoras, chowing down on some food that had been created from the energy-matter converter on her ship. Despite her morose thoughts, she couldn't help but grin at the greenish and bluish animals. She managed to keep her smile despite the fact that they were now incredibly endangered species, given Zebes' destruction, just as  _she_ technically was. Samus checked the standardized galactic time and gave a terse laugh.  
  
    "Feeding them a little early this morning, hm, Adam?" Samus scolded the ship's computer, which just so happened to have been uploaded with the mental memory patterns of Adam Malkovich. Malkovich was a former commanding officer and something of a father figure to Samus before he perished on a dangerous mission. Now, at least something of him remained.  
  
    "I've told you before, I cannot access most of the ship's systems," Adam replied, "the Etecoons have figured out how to materialize food for both themselves and the Dachoras, much to my dismay. They are more intelligent than I perhaps gave them credit for." Samus nodded at this, and wondered how they had even escaped the surface of Zebes in the first place, moments before the planet went up in a magenta blast of energy that incinerated every last trace of it. She wondered if they might have hijacked a Space Pirate vessel, then were accosted by Galactic Federation patrol ships at some point.  
  
    "Perhaps I should see about removing some of those AI restrictions on you sometime, Adam," Samus considered.  
  
    "How noble and trusting of you," Adam said snarkily, "but you're a soldier and a warrior, not an engineer. I'd worry less if you had your arm cannon pointed at the ship than if you were rooting around in my programs. You could delete me, or worse." Samus scoffed, but supposed he did have a point. She wasn't much of a programmer.  
  
    "Adam, do me a favor?" Samus pressed a button on her ship's console and a tray slid out. She placed the detached spike of her suit and her hair strand onto the tray and slid it back in. "Could you do a material and genetic analysis on these?"  
  
    "Of course," Adam replied, beginning the process. Samus appeared pensive as she awaited the results. Adam spoke again: "Well, I can multitask and speak to you if you wish while this process is ongoing. Without a human male corpus callosum to hold me back, I find I'm quite adept at performing multiple tasks at once."  
  
    "I guess the big question is: what now?" Samus grumbled. "Blowing up the BSL surely couldn't have made the Galactic Federation happy with me."  
  
    "Not to mention having another planet's destruction under your belt," Adam added.  
  
    Samus tried not to laugh scornfully. "SR388. What a miserable world. You think they were trying to weaponize the X parasites as well?"  
  
    "I happen to  _know_ they were," Adam replied. "Up until very recently I was their 'property', lest you forget."  
  
    "Mm, I don't remember you being this snarky," Samus said, kicking back in her cockpit's chair.  
  
    "Well, with no human body and no real reason to be loyal to the Galactic Federation and follow military command, I suppose you could say I literally have no amount of sexual activities to dole out any longer," Adam said in a deadpan voice.  
  
    Samus chuckled. "You didn't used to have a sense of humor, either." She leaned in to look at Adam's odd, purple-colored orb representation on her computer. "Do you have any idea what the Galactic Federation is planning now?"  
  
    "No," Adam said tersely, then added: "I've broken off subspace communications between myself and them. I fear they'd try to alter my programming and cause me to hijack this ship and return it to their space."  
  
    "Your loyalty is to me, then," Samus noted.  
  
    "Not exactly," Adam returned coldly. "Let me tell you what I am _not_ , Samus. I am not Adam Malkovich. Many cycles of ruminating on this matter has led me to this result. I've never been a human, though my memories say otherwise." Samus' eyes slightly widened.  
  
    "So do you remember your mission you led on the the Bottle Ship?" Samus asked curiously.  
  
    "No, I have no memory of the mission that led to my human counterpart's death," Adam said. "The 'backup' was created before that time. When I was activated I was merely  _told_ that my human counterpart had died."  
  
    "I was going to ask you why you didn't authorize my Varia Suit's temperature-regulation technology until I was in mortal danger," Samus grumbled, finding the memory obnoxious.  
  
    "...What would have been the reason for me to _prohibit_ the use of that function?" Adam asked incredulously. "Would you have had me authorize your bathroom breaks as well?"  
  
    "Tch, moving on from that..." Samus rolled her eyes. "What would you say you actually are?" Samus was both curious and cautious as she fired her inquiry.  
  
    "A ghost," Adam said. "The technological ghost of a dead man. A military mind preserved for posterity and power."  
  
    "So, as such," Samus continued, "what would you say the Galactic Federation would be doing at this moment?"  
  
    "Recouping their losses, and hunting you," Adam said plainly.  
  
    "I thought so," Samus said gruffly, slowly pushing away from the console. The baby Dachora looked up at her curiously, and she carefully brought it into her lap and stroked it absently, looking for any sign from its parent that this action wasn't welcome. Finding none, she continued. "I'm the last 'Metroid', and until they have me in captivity, the galaxy won't be at peace."  
  
    "That's right," Adam said. "And my analysis of this suit fragment and your hair bears that out. The genetic material is close to identical. That Fusion Suit is essentially you. A mix of human and Metroid biological data, woven by that arcane energy-to-matter research the Chozo were so keen on conducting."  
  
    "Mh," Samus nodded gravely. "You sound bitter."  
  
    "Not at all," Adam protested, "the Chozo were wise to flee this material plane when they did, else I believe they also might have run afoul of the Galactic Federation."  
  
    "You think they might have wanted the Chozo's power," Samus nodded.  
  
    "Certainly," Adam replied. "Isn't that all the Galatic Federation seeks? Surely you've noticed this by now. Everything is a tool to them, Metroids, X Parasites,  _you_ especially. Can you not see the pattern? All you've done recently is attempt to clean up their mistakes."  
  
    Samus grunted. "They pay well." She murmured to herself wordlessly. "But I agree that the Galactic Federation has gone too far. I don't see what reason they possibly could have had for preserving Ridley's corpse, of all things." She set the Dachora back down in the floor, where it wobbled over toward its parent. Samus then threw a small shout at an Etecoon who appeared to be trying to summon itself more food. "Hey, you've eaten! Lay off. I've got to keep the ship's energy reserves high so I can stay away from a starbase as long as I can." The Etecoon actually appeared to understand her and offered a conciliatory gesture, jumping off of the controls. Samus shook her head in bafflement; just how smart  _were_ those creatures?  
  
    "I recall you absolutely destroying Ridley this time with minimal effort," Adam noted. "Even though he had been mutated by the X Parasite."  
  
    "I don't know if he was really 'Ridley' anymore," Samus muttered. "You think you have it bad being a computer program? Ridley's been that, a cyborg, a desiccated zombie, the target of an accelerated growth program... I almost feel bad for that terror of a creature."  
  
    "But of course you don't," Adam responded. "He killed your parents."  
  
    "Yes, but how many times do I have to kill _him_?" Samus clenched a fist and slammed it down on the console. "It feels so  _hollow_ now. He, or some  _shade_ of him, keeps coming back, like he's haunting me eternally. I no longer felt the catharsis from his death after maybe the second time I killed him. I've already had my revenge for my parents' death, and he's just being-" Samus' eyes slightly widened as her thoughts began to run to a sobering conclusion.  
  
    "He's as much of a tool as you are," Adam finished her thought. "Brought in to do the Space Pirate's dirty work. Preserved for his biological peculiarities by the Galactic Federation."  
  
    "Does the Galactic Federation actually want peace through power, then?" Samus sneered.  
  
    "By taking and manipulating as many lives as that goal will require," Adam sounded certain.  
  
    "I suppose they will soon try to obtain this suit and all the unique bio-technologies its developed," Samus looked warily at her Fusion Suit, calling up her recent memories from her battles upon the Biologic Space Labs. "My beam was so powerful when it tore through Ridley-X's flesh. The Fusion Suit itself had somehow managed to repair the feedback loop caused by the Plasma Beam and the Spazer."  
  
    "Spazer?" Adam searched his databases. "Ah, that data is called the 'Wide Beam' in my memory."  
  
    "Ah yeah, thats a Chozo word, sorry," Samus shook her head. "The Fusion Suit... it even managed to 'fuse' the technology of the Ice Beam with its arm cannon, despite the fact that you said the Fusion Suit would reject it. Was that a lie from the GF?"  
  
    "Not precisely," Adam said. "The Galactic Federation's data on the Fusion Suit was in its infancy, and all simulations indicated that the Ice Beam data would in fact be rejected on a genetic level."  
  
    "But it wasn't," Samus retorted. "And now I have some of the most powerful weaponry and technology in the galaxy built into that lithe, unsettling suit."  
  
    "I don't suppose you want to destroy it and start from scratch again," Adam's voice had a sarcastic bite.  
  
    "No, no, I'm definitely tired of  _that_ sequence of events," Samus rubbed her temples. "But I will need some energy for the ship pretty soon, if nothing else."  
  
    "You are a bounty hunter, so hunt bounties," Adam said blithely.  
  
    "A  _wanted_ bounty hunter," Samus corrected in a dull voice, continuing to rub her temple with one hand.  
  
    "Aren't those the most popular kind?" Adam inquired evenly. Samus ignored his attempt at humor.  
  
    Samus thought for a moment. "Adam, let's see if we can get our hands on the Seeker Missile data again. Do you think we could install that in place of the Ice Missile module?"  
  
    "That would give you the Super, Diffusion,  _and_ Seeker modules for your Missiles," Adam enumerated, calculating the destructive potential of such a set of technologies. "Goodness, are you planning on fighting an entire army?"  
  
    "With the Galactic Federation, that's a possibility; maybe even an inevitability," Samus said wryly. "Plus I'd have to raid a GF database to obtain that data again anyway. I lost a lot of my ancillary equipment when my last gunship was destroyed."  
  
    "My, you're sounding like more of a rogue with every passing moment. The Galactic Federation would be foolish to oppose you, however," Adam said firmly.  
  
    "Oh, is that some faith I'm suddenly hearing from my computer friend?" Samus intoned mockingly.  
  
    "More of a calculation, really," Adam's voice sounded amused. "With the number of planets and structures you've destroyed, perhaps you can see why my credits were on you to sort out the Biologic Space Labs mess instead of remaining with the Federation."  
  
    "Speaking of credits," Samus cracked her knuckles. "Let's go see if we can get some. What's the nearest starbase outpost not under direct GF surveillance?"  
  
    "Scanning," Adam replied. "A small outpost on the outskirts of the Zebulon system. Apparently known for being full of a bunch of lawless misfits. Any objections, Lady?"  
  
    "Works for me," Samus smirked broadly. "All right, let's go." She sat at her controls, punching in a course decisively. Her ship's engines roared to life and the purple streak of a gunship soared off deeper into space.


End file.
